In the realm of horror in 2023, familiar titles like The Exorcist: Believer, the franchise’s sixth instalment, and Renfield, steeped in vampire lore, were complemented by Haunted Mansion exploring the supernatural and The Nun II continuing its eerie sisterly tale. “Scream VI” effortlessly carried on its slasher legacy.

While these films held their own, navigating well-trodden paths within the genre, it’s the lesser-known gem, “Abruptio,” that truly stands out in this diverse landscape. Breaking conventions by utilising lifelike hand puppets—a ground-breaking move for the genre—this film gathered an impressive voice cast, featuring talents like James Marsters, Hana Mae Lee, Christopher McDonald, Jordan Peele, Robert Englund, and Sid Haig, notably Haig’s final film before his passing in 2019. The movie follows Les Hackel, a man thrust into an ominous scenario, awakening to find an implanted explosive device in his neck. To survive, he’s coerced into committing atrocious acts, all while unravelling the enigmatic, surreal world manipulated by an unknown puppeteer. 

VFX artist John Sellings (Kingsman: The Golden Circle, News of the World, Doctor Sleep) says spouses Evan and Kerry Marlowe, director and producer respectively, approached him five-years-ago to help with VFX to do specific scenes that needed 3D/CGI elements created for them. “This included various shots including an exploding Statue of Liberty and creature effects that would be composited into the plates that Evan was shooting in LA,” Sellings explains. “As it was a self-funded independent film it was shooting in sections over the years so VFX wise there would be gaps between working and I would normally work on it evenings or weekends after the day job. Evan was also doing some of the VFX i.e. the eye blinks himself.” 

The finer details of the plot remain largely undisclosed within the public domain and the director wants to keep it that way. However, Sellings does shed some light on the creative approach. “The whole film walks a fantastical reality visual style so most of the VFX were informed from what Evan had shot,” Sellings continues. “One sequence that was quite a big endeavour was creating a vast machine in 3D as it would have been so costly to build it practically or even as a small scale miniature to be composited in the scene,” he says. “Thus, I built this all in MODO and had various lighting reference and so was able to control the lighting changes and animations of the parts of the machine as needed in the narrative of the sequence. This proved a lot of fun as I was building a fantastical steam punk influenced machine from scratch and so there was a lots of back and forth on design elements that fit within the context of the story and the world of Abruptio. The machine sequence was one that was dependent on the VFX working as there was a huge amount going on in it including the machine itself as well as gore and creature effects – it is also quite a powerful and potentially scary sequence so hopefully the VFX do not distract the viewer from any exploding puppet heads.” 

He also elaborates on the fundamental distinctions between working with puppets and working with humans. 

“In terms of the VFX there were different issues as compared to maybe a real actor,” Sellings says. “Firstly, one advantage was that there were fewer facial movements so as we had to both clean up the puppets sometimes where there were some crease issues it was potentially to track and patch those issues. That also helped with adding extra lip movements for accenting certain letters and words – adding an extra level of movement to the characters that were not possible with the puppets being used.  

As well as the VFX side of things Evan also asked me to grade the film – so we eventually ended up with a VFX – GRADE workflow that meant I could update VFX as needed at my end as decide whether I was maybe doing fixes in either VFX or fixing them in the grade.” 

The VFX side was principally compositing work which was done either in Nuke (The Foundry) or fusion (Blackmagic) as he was also grading in Davinci resolve so could jump back and forth quickly and fix any small bits with leaving resolve. “3D / CGI wise most of the work I did was using the Foundry’s MODO but for some of the earlier work a colleague of mine use Maya in our workflow,” Sellings adds. 

He says the toughest encounter he faced was that it was being shot in LA with a tiny crew so there was no VFX supervisor on set. “Thus, Evan and I had a briefing about things to check and look out for and we tried to make sure he was not going to shoot anything that would not be usable for the VFX,” he continues. “For some scenes we prepped more as there would be CGI added so I would ask for additional elements to be shot for reference or to add into the scene.” The team also worked with Yellow Mouse Studios, based in Exeter, which created the TV animations that Selllings then composted into the scene on the TV plates Evan had shot in LA. 

The power of VFX is often a key component in the horror genre but there is always a risk that instead of enhancing the storytelling it can overpower it. Not in this case. “Part of the charm of Abruptio is that it is visually a very unique film and so most of the visual effects were created as part of the background,” Sellings adds. “So there was a lot of green screen shots of puppets that were then to be composited with a moving plate to replicate the character moving such as when the young girl goes to the door. There was also the usual car green screens and as I had just been working on Guy Ritchie’s ‘Wrath of Man’ with Jason Statham, I rebuilt that setup to incorporate the plates I had from Evan so I could quite quickly achieve those shots, bearing in mind there was a lot of them.” 

The director was also the cinematographer and camera operator on set, so Sellings was aware the former would be super busy so there was a chance e unforeseen issues would need to be fixed in VFX. “One thing I did worry a little bit about was the shooting of the green/blue screen elements but have to say what Evan shot was very easy to key and I was able to build a keying template that gave me a high quality key very quickly on the shots,” he adds. “The fact it was puppets meant it tended to be a locked off camera and so possibly one of the most difficult shots was when Evan used his wife Kerry with a mask on so you would see the full body for some of the male characters. So sometimes we needed to both clean up the mask, make sure you did not see the mask slipping out of the clothing or make the form of the body more masculine. So as we normally find at the VFX end of things, it is normally the unforeseen non-VFX shots that need something fixed in them that tend to be the most difficult! So have a great VFX supervisor onset if you can and if you cannot, try and make sure you are not taking the ‘fix it in comp’ attitude when shooting so you don’t have a world of pain when you are trying to repair that shot you cannot drop from the edit.” 

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Abruptio premieres online at the Santa Monica Film Festival on January 17.